


Things Unspoken

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Saiyuki, Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: Dancing, Dragons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:29:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6208972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It will be the first time they've spoken, but not the first time they've met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> For Kintail, who asked me for Gaiden and Gojun.

His shoulders still hurt from the welcome of his brothers, decorum forgotten in a flurry of embraces and back-patting congratulations. _Oh good, you made it, just in time._

He hadn't really wanted to return, though it wasn't because he missed his brothers or his home anything less than fiercely. If he could have arrived on a day like any other, for no reason at all, he would have been content. He would have liked to walk the halls of his palace, renew his acquaintance with old friends, visit his brothers at a leisurely pace and pretend to believe their outrageous stories, admire the additions to their families.

Instead he was lurking in the shadows of his eldest brother's vast banquet hall, watching the throng that ebbed and flowed before him with an unsettled feeling of displacement. It wasn't as if he'd never attended one of these gatherings before. It was just that he'd never seen it from the eyes of an outsider.

He knew most of the important guests, as well he should: kings and the consorts of gods; heroes, scholars and mystics. Dragons from every neighboring country filled the hall with their bold colors and bright laughter, snatches of many languages weaving together a musical din. He saw mostly human faces floating in the sea of luminaries, though some came paired with horns or the shimmering hint of scales, a touch of mane in the sleek fall of glossy hair. Every eye was jewel-toned, every movement a thing of grace, but this wasn't like the gatherings of his youth. He saw politics in the posturing of kings, lines of trade in the smiles exchanged between countries, the possibility of alliance in a coy flirtation.

Perhaps it had always been like this, and he'd never noticed it before. His time in Heaven had opened his eyes to many things...but it hurt him, somehow, to see traces of the kami in his people and their closest cousins.

"Your Majesty," a deferent voice murmured, and he glanced down to find a servant offering him a cup on a tray. The boy was dusky-skinned, his eyes a deep, glittering citrine, surely too young to be serving but exquisite as a statue. Goujun wondered how he'd missed the arrival of the Nagas and girded himself to seek out King Sesha and give a proper welcome.

"Yes?"

"One who is known to you hopes to lighten your heart," the boy said, the tray balanced in his hands lifting a decorous half-inch, supplication without insistence. The cup was eggshell-thin, filled with an amber liquid, and he took it because it was inconceivable that one dragon should try to poison another on an occasion such as this.

Even so, he cast a curious glance over the crowd, wondering who had spotted him and singled him out, what they hoped to achieve with the gesture. _Maybe nothing,_ he chided himself. Perhaps it was meant as simple kindness or the beginning of a seduction, or one of his brothers felt sorry for him. He shouldn't think like a kami when he was _home._

He saw no eyes upon him, no faces angled expectantly his way, but--there, a flash of gold too soft for metal, spilling in a long tail down a stiffly straight spine. Staring at a bared shoulder, he frowned as he recognized the armbands and the simple white clothing, his mind briefly refusing to recognize the man he saw standing there.

"The Bodhisattva and hir companion arrived with my master," the boy offered, soft-voiced and almost invisible, though he peered up through long lashes with eyes that held a second offer as unobtrusive as the first. "Se would have been very sorry not to see you here, and hopes you will think kindly of hir for not refusing the invitation."

Ah. There--a face both strong and soft at once appeared over Konzen Douji's shoulder, flashing him a smile before the Bosatsu glanced away again, laughing at something one of the Nagas said.

"The Bosatsu is welcome wherever se goes," Goujun replied truthfully enough, taking a sip of his--

Not wine. _Soma,_ he recognized, brows arching in surprise. Their cousins of India often brought it with them, but it was rarely offered to outsiders, even other dragons. One taste warmed him through, gave him a feeling of strength that had nothing to do with intoxication, burned all his senses alert.

His eyes sought the Bosatsu again, wondering at the meaning behind this gift, but se was focused entirely on teasing hir nephew. Odd. A Bosatsu might be welcome anywhere, but it wasn't like hir to force others to welcome hir companions as well.

Then again, Konzen Douji was a creature quite outside of easy description. The son of a Buddha and the nephew of a Bosatsu, he had the power of a kami, and yet Goujun had never thought to ask whether or not he _was_ one. Perhaps the fact that Kanzeon had left Jiro Shin at home and brought hir nephew instead was no accident.

At some point the little servant boy slipped away, but Goujun hardly noticed. There was something odd about Konzen being here, something about how he held himself--not as if he was uncomfortable, but as if he was keeping himself apart from the gathering, neither offended nor intending offense. He didn't intend _anything,_ and that was where he and Goujun differed--

\--and that was what brought home to him the ways in which they were the same. Neither of them quite felt like they belonged here, and both would be happier when the whole ordeal was over.

Goujun brought the cup to his lips again, feeling the tingle all the way to the tips of his horns. It almost covered the sharp ache in his chest, convinced him to stay when he would rather have fled. He'd spent too long in Heaven, and he wondered what his Marshal would say if he resigned his position in Tenpou's favor. Likely Tenpou would refuse the honor and chide Goujun for interrupting his reading, then ask him if any dragon could escape Heaven unscathed.

They couldn't, of course. And in him the damage had already been done.

Finishing the last of the soma in a few determined swallows, he started away from the wall and abandoned the cup with the first servant to cross his path. He would pay his respects to King Sesha, greet the Bosatsu, and do his best to enjoy himself while he was here. All too soon he'd be back in the stronghold of the kami, and then he would look back on this time with fondness.

He didn't see King Sesha, but Kanzeon was with the Nagas still, looking oddly at home amidst their blatant sensuality. Konzen, on the other hand, was stone-faced and silent in the face of Kanzeon's laughter, a slight frown of irritation marring his brows. The attention of the Nagas seemed to be split evenly between the two, green and orange eyes intent with hot curiosity and wonderment, a touch of unsurprised amusement in their smiles. Apparently they'd seen the Bosatsu tease hir nephew before.

He had only just reached the Bosatsu's side when a great commotion stirred the center of the hall, and his greeting hovered forgotten on his lips as he turned to face the disturbance. Someone had gathered the musicians from the corners of the room, and a space was being cleared amidst much laughter and exchange of friendly taunts. Goujun sighed, but inside he was obscurely comforted. Some things truly never changed.

"What's this? You sound like they've begun a drinking contest," the Bosatsu asked, turning to him with a grin.

"A drinking contest would be easier to judge," Goujun replied, bowing his head in greeting. "No one can argue with the only person left standing."

"They're going to dance," one of the Nagas said, a faint hiss ghosting her words. She had unusual eyes, almost the color of sandstone, and he remembered her suddenly as Manasa, Sesha's half-kami niece. Perhaps that explained the Bosatsu's presence. "They do this every century...as if anyone could out-dance a Naga."

"We have dragons who can dance the clouds down out of the sky," Goujun parried with a smile, amused at being drawn into argument over this yet again.

Manasa tossed her head, the arrogant tension of her sleek body a challenge. "Perhaps. But a Naga grows every day closer to fire."

"Are you going to dance?" Kanzeon asked him, interrupting the game with an innocent look.

"No. My brothers are far better dancers than I," he added modestly, wondering at Konzen's quiet snort.

"Then you'll dance with us instead, won't you?" Manasa asked the Bosatsu. "It'll be so boring if we don't get to see anyone new."

"Well...I certainly wouldn't want to be accused of being boring," Kanzeon replied, casting a sidelong look at hir nephew. "What are the rules?"

"The same as any engagement. You wait for an opening, and you take it," Goujun offered, shaking his head. The Bosatsu dancing with dragons. No one in Heaven would believe it--except those who would believe anything of the Bosatsu.

"I see why they gave you an army," Kanzeon teased, though hir smile was kind. "You know, I was hoping you came home to _relax."_

Momentarily startled--the Bosatsu cared enough to have an opinion of him?--Goujun could think of nothing to say. By the time he'd gathered his wits about him, the musicians had started to play.

Dragons as a rule had little use for the soft music of Heaven. They preferred vibrant chords, quick flurries of notes like wind rattling the shutters and rain on an upturned face. Music began like lightning and died away like thunder, and if it couldn't be sung to, then not to dance would be a shame.

A trio of _tatsu_ dragons took the cleared space first, their dress almost imperial in its complexity. Whirling easily into the measures of the dance--so close to fighting, as even the Bosatsu must see--the three dragons twined in and out of the space defined by their fluttering robes, a river of blue and grey silk and long silver hair. Even though he didn't dance--not in gatherings like _this_ \--it was hard to watch without wanting to join them.

When the music began its spiral down to a conclusion, the three dancers slowed their movements, eddying, and then broke apart like a parting of the waters. As soon as the floor was cleared, the musicians flowed without a pause into a new rhythm as five more dragons took the center.

"Interesting music," the Bosatsu commented, and Goujun bent his head to answer without taking his eyes from the dancers.

"Dancing is a reflection of personality, and so the music must be as well. It is the musicians who lead here; if a dragon dances poorly, they may end the song early and ask him to clear the floor. If he dances well, they may change their song to suit him and enhance his skills."

"And the ones who aren't playing now?"

"They'll take their turns as the others tire," Goujun hedged, wondering now if it had been such a wise decision to invite the Bosatsu, what se would make of them after--

"They'll play," Manasa added with a secretive smile, "until we remember we're dragons. Which should be just before dawn, unless someone brings stronger wine."

_The soma_? Goujun wondered, startled, but--no. The Nagas could be mischievous when the mood took them, but surely they wouldn't be interested in causing a spectacle. Not in front of outsiders, at least.

Three more dragons replaced the dancers as the song changed again, his brothers' wives stepping out of the crowd, their stately dignity dropping from them like cloaks. In appearance they were wildly different, dark and fair and fiery, but they were as like as sisters in thought. They brought that closeness to the music, and their dance built upon each other's strengths, the gentleness of mates and the ferocity of mothers. Goujun tried to imagine a fourth dancer in their midst, ice-pale, perhaps, with a serenely smiling face. The image wouldn't come clear, however, and he acknowledged regretfully that the fault was his, that he simply couldn't imagine finding anyone who would suit him the way his brothers' wives suited them. Anyone he chose for convenience, left at home to raise his heirs and manage his household, he wouldn't know well enough to imagine her dance.

Stealing a glance at the Bosatsu, he found hir watching the dancers with unfeigned appreciation, hir face bright with interest. He had never seen the Bosatsu dance, but he suspected that if anyone could dance like a Naga, it was Kanzeon. Curiosity made him look past hir to hir nephew, but while Konzen was also watching the dancers, he still seemed removed from the world around him, uninterested or at least untouched. Rather than being insulted, Goujun felt a spark of pity instead, sorry that Konzen could see such grace in motion and be unmoved.

The music seemed to become louder the longer he watched, though whether that was because the relief musicians were coming in or because the effects of the soma were catching up to him, he couldn't say. Someone offered him another glass and he took it without thinking--wine this time, but a spicy, unfamiliar vintage he couldn't quite place. The tingle of warmth that ran through him made a small voice hiss uncertainly in the back of his mind, but he dismissed it with an inner shrug. He would rather watch the dancing than wonder what the Nagas were up to, and admitting that to himself made him feel like he'd truly come home for the first time that night.

When Manasa grabbed Kanzeon's hand and dragged the Bosatsu to the cleared floor, her handmaids following in a knot, the musicians to their credit didn't hesitate at all. For the other dancers, they had played the falling of the rain, the growl and thunder of the tide, the clashing spark of lightning, but when the first slender foot touched the dancing floor, all that could be heard was the sweet shiver as a single drop fell into a still pool. And then the ripple spread outwards as Kanzeon took the center of the floor, the Nagas circling hir in a languorous drift, serpents of mist on the water.

When Kanzeon raised hir arms, the chime of the bangles on hir wrists became part of the music, echoed by the silver anklets of the Nagas as they turned and turned about, winding closer as Kanzeon began to sway as if se hid scales under hir skin. The music swelled, sure of the Bosatsu now, but the change was so gradual it was hard to say when the lazy promise of the Nagas' dance became earnest seduction, when Kanzeon abandoned hir mimicry of water and danced instead the fire in which the Nagas would one day envelop the world. The gilded tips of their claws flashed as Manasa and her handmaids reached out for the Bosatsu, drawing pleading shapes in the air as Kanzeon twisted just beyond their grasp. For one brief moment, they were the perfect image of longing: water thirsting for fire, the buried wish of every dragon to let the wildness inside run free.

Then the music changed again, and the six of them swirled back into the crowd, leaving the memory of that moment seared into the minds of those around them.

"Exquisite, Bodhisattva!" Manasa caroled with a laugh, breathless and bright-eyed as they returned to their compatriots. "You dance even more beautifully than I dreamed."

"Everyone in India dances," Kanzeon replied modestly, waving a hand that seemed suddenly odd with its perfect, human nails. "I wouldn't have wanted to shame myself."

"Not everyone in India dances like _that,"_ Manasa said, and Goujun privately agreed.

Inspired by the Bosatsu's performance, the dancers that followed threw their hearts and souls into their performances, and Goujun felt inexplicably warmed as he watched his people rise to the challenge. Even those who only watched felt their blood heat in sympathy, an aching desire for motion stirring in every breast. As the hours flew by in a haze of wine and music, he began to see thrumming tension here and there in the crowd, bold offers and swift acceptance, lovers standing coiled together as they watched the dancers with rapt eyes.

"I see what you mean about the wine," Goujun heard the Bosatsu murmur, but his reticence on the matter seemed to have fled. Certainly there was more to these gatherings than a simple renewing of kinship; by strengthening the bonds between their lines, they kept the race of dragons strong.

He might have offered some explanation regardless, but all his attention was fixed on the four dragons locked in mock-combat around a fifth, her white hair sweeping around her in a cloud as she danced between her brothers. Her face was sweet and gentle, even though her blood must surely be roused, and she moved with the dreamy grace of falling snow. Goujun had never been an especially skilled dancer, but as he accepted another glass from the boy who'd accosted him earlier-- _soma again_ \--he found himself wondering if he might find the grace within himself just this once and so catch her eye.

"What about you, Konzen?" the Bosatsu asked, poking one of hir long nails into hir nephew's side. Judging from Konzen's wince, a lack of true claws didn't hinder the Bosatsu in the slightest. "Why don't you give it a try?"

"I don't dance," Konzen said repressively, folding his arms across his chest. The man was as whipcord lean as a Naga, his bearing neither martial nor soft, and Goujun wondered how it was possible to look like desire itself while having none.

"Ah, but you didn't say 'can't,' did you? Go on, make Heaven proud," Kanzeon prodded, jabbing him in the side a few more times until Konzen's scowl gained gritted teeth.

" _Blessed_ Kanzeon Bosatsu--"

"Ooh, we've already progressed to titles. You're about to pitch a fit, aren't you?" Kanzeon teased. "Well, as entertaining as that is, I want to see you dance even more. Now get out there before I push you."

"Fine," Konzen snarled. "But I'm doing it alone."

"Suit yourself," Kanzeon said with a shrug, looking monumentally unsurprised by Konzen's demand. "And give it your best!"

Konzen stalked away with stiff shoulders, and Goujun watched him go with a worried frown. He couldn't imagine how someone so tense expected to dance, and it would be a terrible embarrassment if the musicians refused to play for him. "Bosatsu--"

"Don't worry about my nephew," Kanzeon cut him off with an enigmatic grin. "He just needs to be tricked into enjoying himself. Of course, bullying also works," se added, which didn't reassure Goujun in the slightest.

The musicians almost did falter--looking no doubt for the dragon that would accompany him--when Konzen strode out into the space left by the previous dancers. Goujun almost followed him despite Konzen's wishes, some notion of duty pricking him through the golden haze of the spiked wine and soma he'd been drinking all evening.

The Bosatsu caught him by the arm before he'd taken half a step.

Konzen didn't stop, didn't wait for the music to catch up to him--with a slithering twist that made Goujun start breathlessly in the Bosatsu's grip, Konzen wove himself into the music and made it play for him from the start. Goujun expected Konzen's dance to be sharp and jerky, for Konzen's anger at the Bosatsu to make him fierce, but there was nothing but controlled grace in his movements, his long limbs hypnotic in their sway.

Goujun had noticed Konzen before in Heaven, his eyes usually caught by the curious stillness of the man, exquisite but as lifeless as carved marble. The Bosatsu could provoke him briefly to a rage, but Goujun had never seen Konzen truly engaged by the world, and even now the man seemed armored by an air of untouchability.

It was probably that challenge-- _touch-me-not_ \--that made Goujun consider for the first time the opposite, that challenge or the wine, or--Heaven help him--Konzen's dance. It was nothing like Kanzeon's, wasn't meant as a seduction or empathy, but it called to him nonetheless. The drift of Konzen's hands didn't mask their strength, and if Kanzeon moved with a serpent's spine, in Konzen one could see the arch of wings, the gem-bright glitter in inward-looking eyes. Konzen might have been completely alone for all the warmth in that stare, but his _dance_ \--

Konzen swayed in place, his arms patterning the air as he turned, a dervish in white as the long tail of his hair whipped around him as he whirled, slowed, and then returned to the music with that same curious _writhe_ of before. The arc of his spine and the brief baring of his throat left Goujun staring with a dry mouth, humming the faintest of growls too quietly to hear, but he was _seeing_ it now, Konzen's answer to the Bosatsu's dance of cleansing destruction.

Whatever his steps, no matter how sweet or stark the bending of his limbs to follow, Konzen always returned to the music in the end, over and over until everything became one. He was eternity in a closed circuit, and it was lovely and comforting in some way Goujun wasn't yet prepared to consider too closely, but it couldn't distract him from the dancer, coming back again to the beginning one last time as the music _stopped_ for him and let him walk away in silence.

Konzen returned with even, measured steps, his expression inviting no comment, seemingly blind to the eyes that followed him. Bowing politely to the Bosatsu, Konzen murmured, "Excuse me. Some fresh air, if you please."

Kanzeon merely smiled, amused by his retreat to cold manners, but before se could either grant or deny him permission, Konzen had swept past them, heading for the nearest door.

Manasa shifted on the Bosatsu's other side, and somehow that prodded Goujun into action. "Your pardon--he doesn't know the palace very well, and--"

"Go, go," Kanzeon said, shooing him away with a merry grin. "Keep him out of trouble, and I'll owe you one."

Goujun bowed--he hoped politely--and followed after Konzen with a vague feeling of unreality. He'd never really looked at a kami like this, had never seriously considered that anyone might have an inner fire that could make them almost draconic. He wouldn't have suspected it of Konzen at all, but he'd seen it, and now he wanted very badly to taste it.

Konzen must have heard him at his back, but they were almost to the wide, arching doors to the inner palace before Konzen turned on him. Narrowed eyes flicked up at him and frowned, but Goujun could see the slight relaxing of Konzen's face, the argument readied on his lips momentarily forgotten in his surprise. Goujun wondered briefly who Konzen had expected to follow him, but he shoved that aside, closed the gap between them in one stride, and bent without asking to take Konzen's mouth in a kiss.

Konzen's eyes widened, and Goujun could feel the man start minutely in the hands that cupped Konzen's face, mindful of claws. He expected Konzen to push him away at any moment, but Konzen allowed himself to be kissed instead, not quite responding but certainly not struggling. When Goujun drew back, the look he was given was one of hooded speculation, and when Konzen turned away once more, his stride was slower, confident, inviting and expecting Goujun to follow.

They didn't make it as far as a bedroom. Konzen pushed open a door at random, made a vaguely satisfied sound at the empty sitting room beyond, and walked inside. Goujun, who'd felt terribly conspicuous shadowing Konzen through the halls, forgot self-consciousness entirely as he closed the door behind him.

Konzen looked like ice in the moonlight, unsmiling but not a rejection. The quirk of one brow was all the invitation Goujun needed as he crossed the room, anticipation a keen ache in the pit of his stomach.

It was hard to remain careful of his claws with Konzen moving like a Naga under him, hard not to stroke the thin skin of narrow hips, frame broad shoulders with both hands for each thrust. Konzen let him, not hissing but growling when talons slipped and left red streaks across pale skin, growling lower when Goujun bent his head and licked them away with a flickering tongue. Konzen's hands clutched his back, fingers pressing hard just where his wings should be, and he lost everything after that in a blur of heat and motion and a brief instant of joy.

When he woke, he was curled up alone under his cloak on the rug of the palace steward's office, and Manasa was sitting on the couch with her feet tucked under her, watching him. Her eyes were heavy and her lips kiss-swollen, but her frown as he sat reluctantly up was one of faint pique.

"Game to you, Dragon King," she said, lifting her chin with a frown. "I've been trying to coax Konzen Douji to my bed for the past month. Me, a goddess!"

A fertility goddess, Goujun remembered with a feeling of having been willfully stupid.

"And you catch him in one night. I'd see to it that you were bitten by every snake from East to West, but you had no idea what you were doing, did you? Hmph. At least the Bodhisattva's a considerate lover," she added, shrugging off her irritation as she rose, stepping over him. "Fine. Have him, then. He's too prickly to be tamed, anyway."

Rather than watch her go, he began to pull his clothes back on, wondering now if he had really had Konzen at all.


End file.
